LightingChick Knits

She lights. She knits. She blogs.

Friday, November 24, 2006

I'm FREEEEEEEE!!!

theatre stuff!

The show is FINALLY open. I am done with my two weeks in tech hell. For some stupid reason, it has become "tradition" for us to open a show on Thanksgiving Day. It sucks. I am always stunned at the number of people who decide to spend their holiday at a dinner theatre. Trust me, if I had any choice in the matter, I wouldn't be there!

The week actually didn't suck as bad as I thought it would. There were some huge problems with the show that had nothing to do with lighting, so I had it fairly easy. We were in amazingly good shape lighting wise. So I spent many hours doing nothing and getting paid for it. Love that. The lighting designer and I played Scrabble against each other on our Palm Pilots a lot. We were being terribly professional!

I'm going to be very diplomatic and say.. This show is not my favorite. (I'm being very very diplomatic!) Fortunately, it is a fairly short run, so I won't have to suffer through it for too long.Hopefully the audiences will appreciate it for the holiday fluff that it is. I'm really interested to see what the critics think! (I know it's horrible of me, but I enjoy a bad review!)

After the show I headed over to my Aunt and Uncle's house for Turkey Day. I really wanted to just go home, crawl into bed and watch cheesy holiday movies instead of suffering the family holiday(two weeks of tech I tell you!), but I sucked it up and went to join the family. It's always nice to see my cousins, so for that, it was worth it.

Before

After

Before

After

That's my cousin's puppy Maggie. So cute! And very lucky. She was found wandering around a dump in Texas. She was very skinny and sick. A friend of my cousin's found her and took her in. Then my cousin adopted her. She is currently living with my aunt and uncle where she is thriving and getting pampered! And despite her incessant need to chew on my fingers, she was remarkably well behaved.

Despite the large chunks of free time during tech week, I didn't knit a whole lot, but I did get a little done on the Hedera socks.

I'm closing in on the toes! I think I might be able to get these finished by the end of the weekend. It's going to be hard to give these away. I love them. I hope my sister loves them too!

I'm going to go back to enjoying my day of NOTHING. I don't have to be anywhere until 5 pm. I fully intend to be a complete slug for the rest of the day!

Saturday, November 18, 2006

Bad blogger

so um... I said I was going to post on Thursday, and yeah.. um that didn't happen! My show opened Thursday afternoon. When it was over, I came home and crawled in bed. I didn't get up until Friday! So, no Thursday post. Or Friday for that matter! I've just been too exhausted.

Despite a really hateful tech week, the show had a fairly decent opening. No major train wrecks, the audience seemed to really enjoy it, a good time was had by all. But I was sooo glad when that curtain call was over! Everyone had been so stressed out and evil all week, I was really happy to get away from them all. Again I say... the best part about working there: I open the show and I LEAVE.

Leaving actually proved to be quite a challenge. Baltimore got hit by a serious storm. I walked 20 feet from the door of the theatre to my car and was soaked through. I couldn't believe how hard the rain was coming down. I got in my car and tried to maneuver my way home, but it was really scary. I couldn't see anything except rain. Sheets and sheets of it. Fortunately, the further south I drove, the storm lightened up. By the time I was back home, the skies looked like this:

My pictures aren't even close to showing how beautiful it was. In the bottom picture, the clouds were actually a really dark orange. Just gorgeous.

I almost forgot...I meant to tell you all about my trip to see Altar Boyz. As I mentioned before, I was offered free tickets to the show. Sadly, the show wasn't selling at all. So, I invited the ever fabulous Erin to be my date for the evening.

After a few beers and dinner, we headed to the theatre.

To my surprise, we were in the very front row. (many thanks to producer Ken Davenport for the tickets. Apparently, he is a fan of my blog - HAAAAAAA!!!)

The show was a delight. It's about a Catholic boy band. The boys are Matthew, Mark, Luke, Jose and Abraham. It was funny, upbeat, totally toe tapping and rocking. And did I mention funny? It turned out that I actually knew the guy playing Abraham, Nick Blaemire. I was so impressed with him. He did a great job. They did some hard core dancing in the show, so much energy it was crazy.

After the show, Erin and I went to the stage door to see Nick. There was this crazy stalker groupie waiting for the boys. She was seriously a loon. She's seen the tour something like 8 times and saw the NY production 33 times. I have to say that the cast showed a lot of patience and grace in dealing with her cause she was clearly crazy. At one point she said to one of the guys "You have to hug me, I won't see you for a while!" Then Erin said "well, I won't see you either!" And he hugged her too. It was pretty funny.

So, if Altar Boyz comes to a town near you - go see it. It really is quite good. And it is extremely sad to me that it was selling so poorly. I heard that the Hippodrome had to cancel the first week of the Dirty Rotten Scoundrels tour due to poor sales too. If the Hippodrome can't sell tickets, what hope to smaller theatres like ours have? Go support live theatre people!

I guess I should get around to some knitting content, huh? I'm feeling like I'm in a bit of a slump. I am still working on the Hedera socks, but it's kind of a chore. First of all, I am having a lot of trouble with my hands. I don't know if it was the endless hours of programming the light board or what, but my fingers have been so painful lately. My wrist was bothering me the week before that, but thankfully that has eased up a bit. So, I've been taking it a bit slow with the knitting lately. However, I do have a progress shot for you...Hedera socks modeled by the lighting board. I've actually made a bit more progress since I took this picture but I'm still not done with the decreases from the gusset. I really want to get these done soon so I can get back to the Icarus shawl. I'm still laboring under the delusion that I may actually complete both the socks and the shawl by Christmas.

It may be a bit before I can post again as I am headed straight back into tech rehearsals next week. We are opening a show on Thanksgiving Day. Always a treat. Then I will be heading to my Aunt and Uncle's house to suffer through the family dinner. Is it bad that I'd much rather come home and eat leftovers than have to deal with my family? Actually, to be fair, I am looking forward to seeing the cousins. Other than that - coming home is much more appealing.

Unfortunately, due to tech week, I'm not going to be able to make it to Knit Knite. Sad, sad, sad!

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

A No Picture Post

Just a quick post to say yes I am still alive. I am in tech week hell at the Baltmore theatre this week. It is not going well, but I am striving to remain pleasant and upbeat. It's my favorite thing about working at the Baltimore space... I go in, program the lighting board, and LEAVE. People bitch and complain and I just nod and smile. I don't have to get involved in all the drama and stress and tension! I am going to have to run lights for the opening performance of the show, but then I will be going back to Columbia, where I will go right into tech for our next show there. Busy busy girl right now.

Not much knitting to speak of. Usually I am able to knit through rehearsals, but the lighting designer for this show is keeping me very busy. I've only been able to work on my Hedera socks for a few minutes. Which is probably a good thing because my hands and my wrists are KILLING me lately, especially with having to program the lighting board for hours on end.

I hope to have a post with pictures for you on Thursday evening. In the meantime... head over to Mama E's to read tales of our trip to see Altar Boyz. (which was completely AWESOME by the way! More about that from me on Thursday.)

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Stitches East

I have a yarn hangover. Three days after the fact! The day started bright and early with breakfast at Panera. A group of wild-eyed yarn addicts met for some pre-shopping caffeinated drinks.That is Lolly, Laura, Diane, Jolene, Jen and the back of Suzanne's head. Jenna was there too, I somehow managed to not get her in the picture.

We all made the trek to Baltimore and met up with Erin, CAm, Eunny, and Stacey who made the trip all the way from MA for the occasion.

Before I ripped out my wallet, Erin presented me with an early birthday present.

That's the long sought after Handmaiden Seasilk!!! I LOVE IT. It is just beautiful. Thank you thank you thank you Mama E!! (She also gave me some chocolate, but oddly, it has vanished.... yum!) Erin didn't want me to be in a desperate search for it all day, so she gave it to me early. That Erin... she's the best. I am taking suggestions on what this wants to be knit into! Meanwhile, I shall pet and fondle it endlessly.

At some point during the day, some woman offered to ball it up for me - mainly so she could demonstrate her electric ball winder. I will say, it was very cool. However, with a price tag of $275, it is more than out of my range! She said that our knitting group should all pitch in and buy it. Ha! We'd all be fighting over visiting rights!

We tried to stay together. We tried to have a plan. We tried to be methodical in our shopping methods. But all that fiber just made us all dizzy and all our plans quickly dissolved into a yarn buying frenzy. I spent way too much money, but thanks to an extremely profitable waiting shift the night before, I was flush. I almost managed to stick to my shopping list. Here's the haul...

um... yeah, that's another skein of Seasilk up there in the upper left corner. Erin found three skeins of it hiding in a booth. She bought one, I bought another and Jolene got one too. The Noro is where I strayed from my shopping list. I've been watching Laura, Eunny, and Sarah knitting entrelac and I wanna try it. So, I bought two skeins of Noro to try out a little entrelac. Lord knows when I'll get around to it, so for now it is stash enhancing!

I also bought this

It is exactly what I was looking for. It's a little darker than the picture shows. I wanted a variegated yarn in greys or blacks and this is it. It will eventually become socks. I'm thinking perhaps it will become another pair of Jaywalkers.

And I bought this...

That's Tess superwash sock yarn. I love love love this yarn. The color, the texture, everything. I have been hearing about the virtues of Tess yarn for awhile now and was thinking I would probably get some at Stitches. When I saw the brown, I knew I had to get it. And as you can see, I immediately went home and cast on for some socks for my sister for Christmas. The pattern is Knitty's Hedera.

I think these socks are going to be gorgeous.

So, other than the Noro, I didn't stray from my wish list too much. I also renewed my IK subscription while I was there. I had a great time though it really was overwhelming and I don't feel like I saw everything. I wish I had time to go back on Sunday. But I guess it's better for my wallet that I didn't! Stitches has a totally different feel than MS&W. It felt much more commercial. And it was definitely all about the shopping. MS&W had more of a community feel to it. But Stitches was good fun nonetheless.

There are mistakes, but overall, I think it came out well. The second one is going to be awhile in the making as I am now onto Christmas knits. Hopefully it will not languish as long as the Pomatomus socks have!

I also finished this

It's a simple 2X2 rib in Reynold's Smile. I have been wearing it nonstop since its completion!

And finally... How cool is this...

I got an email this morning from the director of marketing for the national tour of "Altar Boyz." Seems they did a search for Maryland theatre bloggers and found me. They offered me two FREE tickets to see the show at the Hippodrome in Baltimore!!! Yahooo! I'm going on Sunday! Earlier in the week, they sent me an email offering discounted tickets at $26. If you are at all interested in the discount, shoot me an email and I will forward it to you.